What I would like this election to mean (a silly rant)
I want the sixties to end.
I have had enough. That whole damned generation has spent its entire life fighting and re-fighting the same struggle. Again and again, I hear the same things -- the words are different, but the thoughts are the same. "Dirty America-hating hippie!" "Fascist pig!" "Socialist!" "Imperialist warmonger!" "How could you spit on our troops?" And what does it get us? Does anyone even listen anymore, or just dutifully line up according to ideology? I don't care who went to war, I don't care who protested, I don't care who dodged the draft, and I don't care whose daddy got them into the National Guard. It was forty years ago! Surely they've done something since then, something better worth defining themselves by? I could as well run for president based on my video gaming performance in college!
And if that weren't enough, they want my generation to dance to the same tune. They made a new Vietnam War, a new culture war, a new cold war, so we can become another set of worn-out cliches. Never mind that the world is a totally different place. Never mind that that sort of petty sports-team divisiveness hurts us more than anything else.
No more! Obama seems to understand this, but many of his supporters and many more of his detractors miss the point. To continue defining ourselves and our public discourse by what the Baby Boomers did when they were young is to lock ourselves in the past, forever unable to deal with the problems facing us in the future.
I have had enough. That whole damned generation has spent its entire life fighting and re-fighting the same struggle. Again and again, I hear the same things -- the words are different, but the thoughts are the same. "Dirty America-hating hippie!" "Fascist pig!" "Socialist!" "Imperialist warmonger!" "How could you spit on our troops?" And what does it get us? Does anyone even listen anymore, or just dutifully line up according to ideology? I don't care who went to war, I don't care who protested, I don't care who dodged the draft, and I don't care whose daddy got them into the National Guard. It was forty years ago! Surely they've done something since then, something better worth defining themselves by? I could as well run for president based on my video gaming performance in college!
And if that weren't enough, they want my generation to dance to the same tune. They made a new Vietnam War, a new culture war, a new cold war, so we can become another set of worn-out cliches. Never mind that the world is a totally different place. Never mind that that sort of petty sports-team divisiveness hurts us more than anything else.
No more! Obama seems to understand this, but many of his supporters and many more of his detractors miss the point. To continue defining ourselves and our public discourse by what the Baby Boomers did when they were young is to lock ourselves in the past, forever unable to deal with the problems facing us in the future.